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Friday, 30 November 2012

Today, we’re going on a journey. A
mental journey. On this whimsical trip through space and time, we’ll visit and
explore the people and landscapes that shape the physical fabric of Toronto
while understanding their realities through the use of mediated culture. The
dominant real, cyber and imagined tools used to create collective identity is
often only a surface-level or inaccurate interpretation of a community. Asking questions about each medium while
seeking options for grassroots reforming or dissent can transcend these
ideological perceptions to create more appropriate and community-based
depictions.

Our journey will include stops in
five different yet interconnected Toronto communities where we will learn about
their histories, the present-day social tensions and/or bonds, how media has
shaped their role within the city, and what options exist to disrupt and
transform these processes. In such a large and diverse space like Toronto, many
different connections can be made between its urban fabric and mediated
culture. This is but a snippet of the opportunities we have for communal
learning and growth. Buckle in; shit’s going to get crazy.

Parkdale

Our trip begins during a mid-fall Saturday
afternoon on Queen Street West at Landsdowne. Storefront windows showcase tacky
trinkets and borderline-creepy mannequins (or person-equins, to be politically
correct) dressed in 80’s style shawls while old white men lean against the
glass, chain smoking beside a cart full of empty beer bottles. Every once in a
while, an avant-garde style bar or cafe screams itself onto the sidewalk,
wedged in between the priceless fabric shop and the ‘Shawarma Palace’. It’s as
if a hipster shape-shifted into a coffee shop and got lost in a bingo hall. It
is also a sign of change, of things to come and other things being lost along the
way.

The 'Parkdale Sharrows' - another example of slum housing in Parkdale

Despite
the erratic whiff of stale body odour, something to do with this gadabout scene
of old and new feels together;
somehow intertwined with each other in a weirdly harmonious way. You’ve made
your way West on Queen Street halfway to Roncesvalles Ave at Sorauren Ave when
you suddenly stop because something interesting has caught your eye across the
street. From your vantage point outside of Pete’s Diner, you curiously watch as
a bustling group of people, some with walkers and wheelchairs, gather outside a
small enclave with a door on one side. Through the window, a raucous of music
and loud conversations competing to be heard emanates through walls and spills
onto the street. The scene is almost memorizing and pulls you into the warmth
of its interior – this place, of course, is the Parkdale Activity andRecreation Centre (PARC), known to many as simply ‘home’.

Of
course, PARC wouldn’t be here if its users weren’t forced into the area in the
first place. The 60’s were not a great era for Toronto’s West end, and the
people here know that better that most – many of whom survived a decade of
marginalization after the local mega mental health treatment hospital
‘deinstitutionalized’ and forced its residential care patients into group homes
and slum housing projects. What followed was a systematic stereotyping of the
mentally ill living in Parkdale and one of the worst examples of social
segregation to ever happen in Toronto. Cut off from vital resources and support
systems, these psychiatric patient survivors lived in isolation, fear and
immense socio-economic oppression (many, in fact, still do). The way Toronto has unfairly portrayed this group in
media and projected extreme NIMBYism (not in my back yard...ism) continues to
haunt each individuals day-to-day struggle.

Today,
places like PARC are promoting a resurgence of community open space where
members can leave their baggage at the door and find solace in connecting with
other residents while openly talking about their mental and physical
challenges. Parkdale has also been the subject of a recent explosion in urban
studies research. One article, entitled ‘Village Ghetto Land’ (Whitzman &
Slater, 2006), disucsses how ‘in Parkdale, a history of the neighbourhood was
constructed in the 1970’s by using a selective reading of the historic record,
and this narrative has been used to legitimize the gentrification of the
neighbourhood’ (pg.690). PARC has supported this research and is working with
community members to draw an alternative and more accurate story of their
histories. PARC has, in turn, created ‘accidental realness’ (de Zongotita,
2005) on the streets of Parkdale, where the issues of its residents are
‘something that has to be dealt with, something that isn’t an option. We are
most free of mediation, we are most real, when we are at the disposal of
accident and necessity.’ (pg.14).

Liberty Village

There arguably couldn't be a place
in Toronto that is in more juxtaposition to Parkdale than Liberty Village.
Curiously, although such stark contrast exists, the two are located
conveniently close by. You've been transported just Southeast of Parkdale to the
heart of the ‘Entertainment District’ on King Street West. Overpriced furniture
stores occupy the main floor of fifteen story buildings. The Goodlife Fitness
Centre is just ahead. Suddenly, you've acquired a silk pashmina and skinny
jeans. Time to hit the streets of Liberty Village.

Liberty Village is a prime example
of what is known as an ‘artist community’ that has been appropriated and
reshaped to fit the desires of an upper-class development. The same
transformation that took Liberty Village by storm in the 1970’s and 80’s can be
seen in Parkdale now – though it is in a much later stage here. The
hyper-gentrification of Liberty Village turned what was a derelict warehouse
industrial area into Toronto’s most glamorous condo development in less than
fifteen years and to the chorus of countless excluded voices who were pushed
(or forced, to be more accurate) out
of the area. John Catungal and Leslie Deborah (2009), authors of ‘Placing power
in the creative city: governmentalities and subjectivities in Liberty Village,
Toronto’ explain this phenomenon: ‘the production of a place identity requires
both the production of new subjectivities and the exclusion of alternative
actors and understandings of organization within the disctrict’ (pg.2579).
Liberty Village certainly retains a unique identity within Toronto – an
upscale, exclusive and downright facny-ass residential community where only the
most business savvy and fashion-forward dwell. But how did this image become so
big, and what medium was used to cover up the exclusion of other actors?

Much of the forces at play can be
understood by critically examining how the living spaces in Liberty Village –
condominiums, to be precise – are advertised and framed in the media. There is
a certain culture that is attached to condos and reinforced by media messages
in real estate advertising: one of exclusivity, safety, and swank or posh living. Indeed, when you invest in a condo you aren’t just
buying an apartment (presumably, you only buy apartments when you’re buying apartments). Instead, you’ve acquired
a lifestyle. That is what makes condo
living something to aspire to and that is also why housing in Liberty Village
is so goddamn expensive.

1137 King Street West - a retrofitted industrial factory turned office space -
is a prime example of the upscale image sold for for your sole in Liberty Village

To put a name to this proverbial
game, Liberty Village is a picture perfect example of something called targeted advertising. As Peter Steven
(2011) frankly puts it, ‘Media executives are only concerned with those groups
with the most money to spend – so we know the most about young men in their
twenties and well-off urban dwellers’ (pg.78). Ads for new tenants at Liberty
Village specifically target young, single well-to-do city folk by portraying a
lifestyle only affordable by said group. By successfully deconstructing these
medium, we learn how other voices are silenced in the process.

Saturday, 24 November 2012

I hear you like blogs. So I made a blog about a blog. It's a blog IN a blog. It's blog inception.

What follows is an edited version of an assignment I created for a class entitled Environmental Media, Culture and Communication late in September 2012. Thus ends the themed month of Alt-Media as November's final week begins.

"The Dark Ages of a Media Caveman

I
am fully aware of my history as an archaic when it comes to media. It always
took me an absurdly longer time than anyone else to open a Facebook profile, be
Zen with MSN Messenger or change the absolutely embarrassing tag name of my old
hotmail account (which is unsuitable enough to not mention in this post) to a more ‘grown up’ version. I was
ridiculed for operating on ‘dial up’ internet throughout my entire high school
career; still, I found something oddly comforting in listening to the hush and
static of my ancient computer attempting to connect to a phone line. These
outdated versions of cyberspace forced patience and understanding out of their
users – something I learned early on and kept with me for a long time.

In
some cases, I think my almost natural hostility towards the adoption of new
media has kept me in the dark about what is happening ‘out there’: that is, in
the cyber world around me. Perhaps my hesitations are actually fears that deal with the bigger picture.
Am I going to lose real human contact
with my friends if I live to post my every movement on Twitter? How many cute
kitten videos on Youtube are enough to actually make me forget what it’s like
to share a physical connection with non-human animals? (editor’s note:
apparently 2,113,457, according to the research and comments of the professor
who marked this). For the most case, I think my reservations are completely out
of frame and don’t really amount to anything that would be considered
realistic, but they do continue to hold me back.

Don't press play - it's a trap!

It
is the human detachment factor I automatically consider when being introduced
to different types of new media that I wrestle with. I’ll enjoy something in concept but witness its wide abuse by
my peers, consequently turning me off of said medium altogether. I can’t
prevent my mind from re-envisioning a more intimate use of new media, one that
is not linear but reciprocal, embracing certain virtues of storytelling,
empowerment and open dialogue. Consequently, it was with high hopes that I
began my journey as what the highly connected mass refer to as a ‘blogger’, and
it was with great disappointment that I failed rather quickly.

At First There Was.......Well, There Wasn’t Very
Much at all.

Travel blogging and writing is
probably one of the most challenging occupations one can fill, and I could not
have made a bigger mistake after I decided that this was my dream vocation. In
hindsight, I shake my head and ponder over how naive I was to assume that I
knew what I was doing. It actually physically pains me to discuss this, but I
have to (at least once) re-tell my story of epic miscalculation and shortfall
to gage where I am today.

Working hard in Bolgatanga, Ghana

I was, in a previous lifetime,
certain that my skill set as a person lent well to what is accurately named
‘travel altruism’. This is the practice of combining long-term international
travel with some kind of aid work (building schools, working on food security,
saving the world, etc.). When an opportunity to live and volunteer in Northern
Rural Ghana presented itself to me, I assumed (wrongly) that it would also
become my ticket to blogging superstardom. Naturally, I would combine every writing
tool I didn’t have with the misguided notion that everyone would want to hear about my adventure abroad. My answer to
such an overwhelming demand was to create a wildly successful blog creatively
entitled ‘Aaron in Ghana’. This was supposed to be a vital lifeline that would
connect my experiences at work and in my foster-home to the member base of
people who had fundraised for this trip back in Canada. I wanted so badly to
provide a lens that would accurately depict what I was experiencing but, not surprisingly,
my ambitious project did not have such positive results and was abandoned early
on when I realized that absolutely no one
was reading it. How could I have tried so hard and yet failed so miserably?

The learning journey I was about to
take on was only just beginning. In fact, I hadn’t even left the gate. If I was
to learn anything important at all I had to critique my own work and admit that
although ‘Aaron in Ghana’ started off with some pretty optimistic expectations,
it ultimately failed because my ability to craft something unique sucked. This
was not a lesson I was ready for. Because I had not yet found a way to make an
impact on my readers (if I had readers
at all) I became desperate for redemption, this time under a new identity while
en route to a new summer adventure in Whitehorse one year after what I am now
referring to as ‘The Ghana Blogging Crisis’.

Exploring the Carcross Desert in Southern Yukon

My blogging attempts in Whitehorse
were quite possibly the very summit of a mountain filled with all of the horrible
work I was producing. This was a very large mountain. At least my second
attempt yielded more thought in its title, but not very much. ‘Riding the
Whitehorse’ was a blog I managed which lasted a grand total of two months and an
example of its contents read as follows:

‘....Today I
went on an airplane. It took me to Vancouver. What a great city! When we got
there, we took the Skytrain to our hostel. The Skytrain is really fun. Our
hostel is on Jericho Beach. I recommend it. Then we went to English Bay where
we saw the ocean. It was pretty cold. After that we went to Granville
Isla......’

I
would rather shear my eyelids with a potato peeler than read excerpts from that
blog again.

It would take me almost two years after
Whitehorse before I would ever re-attempt to publish a blog again. I was
deflated by how senselessly boring it was not only to post this crap, but read
it aloud to myself afterwards. I was convinced that blogging wasn’t for me
after all.

Why Blog?

I retract that statement -I am perfect for a Harlequin novel.

Despite my quick faceplant into a pile
of self-produced material that wasn’t even fit for a Harlequin Romance novel, I
have since learned that blogging can in fact be an immensely gratifying process
that can have more of an impact on the blogger him/her self than their readers.
Blogging is an immensely self-reflective process for the plain fact that each
post is a part of someone that is being sent into the world completely
unprotected. The subject matter does not have to be even remotely personal;
like any artist, what you produce is uniquely your own and comes from a place
that harbors intense emotional sentimentality. I’ve since looked back on my
mundane and pathetic attempts at blogging from years past and cringed at its staleness.
The gradual change in content and substance has proved to me that blogging is
indeed a craft which can be improved
and worked on over a period of constant reflection and acceptance of criticism.

Blogging is also an excellent way to
create connections across many superficial cyber borders between cultures and
beliefs. Its accessibility can be endlessly impactful, allowing for the
inclusion and overlapping of a plethora of peoples, all with different
backgrounds and stories. It is at this intersection that blogging becomes
cyclical, having equal significance for its creators and its audience. I have
learned much about myself through blogging - my insecurities, my privilege, my
prejudices – because I can make something real from an idea, let it ferment on
some page in the internet, and revisit it months later, often with a totally
new perspective on its subject matter. This has been a constant ebb and flow
for me during the blogging process – creating something from within myself,
stepping outside of it for a while and then questioning it on a later date.

Finding ‘Lost and Found’

One of the hardest things to do as
an early blogger was to admit to myself that the things I experienced and
wanted to talk about were actually worthy
of putting on a blog. Struggling with this aspect of blogging had
ultimately lead to failure and was a main part of why I had not produced
anything impactful during my first two attempts. My lack of confidence led to
an absence of creativity and my posts read more like a travel journal instead
of an engaging story. Ironically, it was my fear of having boring things to say
that actually made me sound so incredibly
boring. After finally overcoming this fear, I began to re-envision a new
blog that would take from my experience but provide insights that people could
actually relate to. With it, my current blog ‘Lost and Found’ was born in
November of 2011.

Kind of like this, but with less 80's movies and porno mags.

I wanted the name of my blog to be
simple yet profound, which also happened to be the same recipe I could use
while brainstorming and creating posts. Lost and Found tapped into my childhood
as a curious and rambunctious boy who by nature lived to get dirty and perhaps
lose an article of clothing here or there as collateral damage. I was
constantly making trips to the Lost and Found bin at public school, always
emerging with a boot or pair of gloves in hand. It was ability to be
adventurous and loose part of myself along the way that never quite left me. Lost
and Found is an attempt at expressing this part of me but keeping it at a level
that other people can connect with. In the process, I have been constantly
stepping outside of myself and finding balance between entertainment, humor and
life lessons.

At the time of writing this
sentence, I have contributed 31 posts to
Lost and Found which have altogether received a very humble 3605 page reviews
(half of which probably are my mom) with all of six subscribers, but I have
learned not to measure its success by numbers. Lost and Found has had more of
an impact on me than it has had on its readers. What keeps me motivated to
write and post is the fact that I can am passionately aware and committed to my
own projection of the world, which includes the fact I can be wrong, I can
re-learn and I can change. Lost and Found has provided an excellent platform
from which to fall-and-get-back-up from. Repeatedly.

Monday, 19 November 2012

If I was ever curious as to what happens
when you collide a bike repair shop, a campus newspaper, a public interest
group, some local talent and really, really cheap beer, that void in the life
would have been fulfilled last Thursday night at the I Heart Alt Media Fundraiser . The jam of energized young
do-gooders and $3 bottles of import-quality brews made this one-of-a-kind event
something its organizers should be proud of. I, for one, arrived armed with a
camera and tad bit of ‘I’m with the band’ snobbery, blissfully unaware of the
fact that after a smooth serenade from the oober clever (and sexy) duo Houses for Birds my face was
going to melt off by the proverbial heat generated by edgy pop-cult smashing
politically driven rhyme generators Lee
Reed and Test their Logik.

Lee Reed blowing people's minds on Thursday night.

A musical performance at Bike
Pirates......Makes sense, right? Actually, amidst the shelves of wheel hubs and
greasy tools a perfect stage was set to kick off the ‘Rebuilding Bridges’
conference held conjunctively by the York University and Toronto chapters of
the Ontario Public Interest Group
(OPIRG). The conference has set its intent on creating connections between dynamic
and change-activating groups from across Toronto and Canada for the purpose of
‘rebuilding’ the shape and impact of social movements. Certainly the mix of
support at Friday’s event is indicative of its all-encompassing mammoth-sized reach.

Another organization involved in the organizing of the evening was the York University Free Press, an
alternative newspaper originating from the student body at (you guessed it)
York University. The YU Free Press is now in its eighth year of challenging
mainstream media and offering new and interesting information that transcends the
corporate model. Ashley Grover, Layout Editor and key organizer at the Free Press,
commented that “The editorial collective at the Free Press was extremely
grateful for the turnout at the event and all the effort that OPIRG Toronto and
OPIRG at York put into it. We believe that the university is a sphere that
should reaffirm the student voice while taking care to include complex
discourses on social justice and alternative thinking. We also love lolcats a
little too much and hope after this event we’ve got all of you asking “I can
has Free Press?”

Don’t
worry, Ashley.....I’m on it.

I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t the only
person who had a good time at the I Healt
Alt Media Fundraiser and that Toronto needs more opportunities that allow
people to learn about how media can be a force for social change. Events like
this are crucial to the survival and scaling out of media that matters;
information that is mediated by real
people and not Fox News. Because as a blogger and writer, I know it’s not
always about what you read but who wrote what you read.

Monday, 12 November 2012

Canadian media has a long and storied
history of preserving tradition and promoting our image as a culturally diverse
and pluralistic country. Central to our media outlets is the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) or ‘Radio-Canada’, our national public radio
and television broadcaster. Within the many branches of CBC there exist
authentic Canadian voices with the capacity to embrace the true spirit of what
it is to live in such a beautiful and eclectic country.

We can only assume he watches Last Man Standing

Last spring, amongst a slew of federal
budget cuts to the public sector, the
CBC announced its plans to cut hundreds of jobs, cancel certain programs
and ‘make less Canadian content’ to rake in promotional money from big-name
international shows as a strategy to fill the endless void in funding. This
article is an argument against the de-Canadianisation of Canadian public media,
citing four people who reinforce why it is imperative to re-invest in CBC. In
the meantime, we’d like to thank the Harper Government for its senseless budget
slashing comparable to the killing of Mrs.Voorhees scene in Friday the 13th.

1)
Stewart McLean/The Vinyl Cafe

Radio has felt the pangs of
hyper-technological advancement harder than most other types of medium and many
argue it was the last great imagination-inspiring machine. As the age of the
radio slowly died, other, more instantly gratifying types of entertainment took
its place and shoved many an old table-top wooden dial-turner into the darkness
of forever storage. The days of mass gatherings and listening to late night
ghost stories on a simple transistor hooked up to a speaker have past, and with
it a very specific skill of radio story telling come dangerously close to
extinction.

It would be hard to tell this to Stewart
McLean, creator and host of the poplar CBC radio show ‘The Vinyl Cafe’.
Though McLean is described as a ‘humorist story-teller’, I’d liken him to be
more of a humble prophet, if only for his simple yet profound ability to engage
with his listeners on many levels. His stories range from fictional shorts to
true accounts of quintessentially Canadian experiences, both from his own
background travelling the country and from locals who share with him. McLean
has also successfully publish 13 books
from his Vinyl Cafe material and won numerous awards in teaching, research,
humor and writing. His efforts to revive
the art of storytelling within popular media have gained the interest of
thousands of Canadians, young and old, and have given a voice to hundreds of
others.

I have written about Grant Lawrence’s witty and inspiring book Adventures in Solitude: What not to Wear to
a Nude Potlock and Other Stories from Desolation Sound here, but couldn’t
create a list of CBC’s best without including his most recent work, ‘The Wild Side’. Bouncing off of his
best selling sophomore novel, Lawrence went on to host this collection of
stories from Canada’s great outdoors that was aired on CBC Radio1 in summer
2012. All ten episodes recount true stories of Canadians who have ventured into
the wilderness and received more than they bargained for.

Any person who can’t help but roam off
the city grid when the call of Mother Nature beckons will have a story of when
things got too close for comfort. Lawrence seems to celebrate our dangerous
encounters in the wild by finding those stories of adventure and adrenaline
when we’re face-to-face with unpredictable circumstances. Whether it’s the guy
who punched a polar bear straight in the face to escape certain death or the
tale of the explorers who found themselves lost for five days inside a freak
Manitoba snowstorm, Lawrence always delivers with bonafide Canadian adventures
guaranteed to keep your attention.

Writer, musician, producer, broadcaster
– Jian Ghomeshi has done it all and amassed a
rapidly growing number of CBC-related works, not to mention a fair amount of
media outside of this company as a drummer, journalist and author. Ghomeshi has
been widely accredited as being one of the most talented and influential
interviewers at CBC and continues to receive record-breaking audiences during
each of his broadcasts.

Although Ghomeshi has interviewed some
of the most popular mainstream artists and actors from around the world, it is
his ability to pull out larger cultural themes during these sessions that has
gained him considerable notoriety. His current and most popular show, Q with Jian
Ghomeshi, is a virtual magazine that explores popular arts and
alternative media with some of the most notable personalities in the biz. Ghomeshi
and company have a knack for dealing with the most innovative and
culture-bending ideas to keep their listeners active and engaged.

Another CBC giant best known for his
political incorrectness is Rick Mercer.
Style, class, humor and quirkiness make The Mercer Report a
dangerously addictive weekly dose of Canadian. Known for his progressive and
no-bullshit skits and rants, Mercer effectively shoves Canadian political and
social issues to the forefront – perhaps while throwing in a few laughs, too. Mercer
is also a recent author with his newest book ‘a
nation worth ranting about’; a collection of classic Mercer rants with a
few personal insights from over the years as a co-creator and actor on This
Hour has 22 Minutes, Made
in Canadaand Talking to Americans.

Along with the big-name politicians and
actors he interviews on his show, Mercer always promotes small-scale events while
touring around to small-town Canada for very unique experiences like trying Salmon
Snorkelling in Campbell River, B.C or attending the Trapper’s Festival in The
Pas, Manitoba. Because of his diversity and pure outreach capabilities, you can
always expect something new and funny on every episode of The Mercer Report.

Friday, 9 November 2012

November 2012 marks a first milestone
for Lost and Found: the all-important one year anniversary. Yep, as of this
point in time, I have been an active ‘blogger’
for longer than Kim Campbell served as Canada’s 19th Prime
Minister. This is a dually noted event as, apparently, more and more people
seem to adopt a blog faster than Angelina Jolie adopts African children.
Ironically, a vast majority of this group don’t keep their blogs active because
image mattered more than investment......kinda like Angelina
Jolie when she adopts African children.

I have come to learn that the
sustainability of a blog has to do with its manager’s ability to commit to the
project and become impassioned by it. Alternative media is now on everyone’s
doorstep – finding your place within it can be more like trying to find a
parking spot at Edmonton Mall. And it’s Saturday afternoon. And you’re driving
a semi-truck. And there’s a dying baby in the passenger seat.

In lieu of my success at staying afloat
for a whole year I will theme the next few posts on Canadian media and its
significance to a 24 year old pathetically trying to loosely grasp hold of
something inside the vast ocean of bloggers everywhere. I hope you can sift
through my self-deprecation and find something meaningful.

Saturday, 3 November 2012

Behind the mighty closed doors of York
University’s faculty and administration exists groups of professional adults
attempting to understand what university students actually do. The results are, predictably, hilariously out of touch
with the realities of young people everywhere as I’ve come to learn over time
and through many interactions with university professionals. My double-edged
perspective as both student and staff allows me to mediate and close the dark
chasm between a rigid university and its tuition-paying disciples, but
sometimes that gap in communication looks more like the Grand Canyon of dead
space with mindlessly bewildered staff on one end and hopelessly lost students
on the other.

I came into the Change Academy a
skeptical martyr who had been caught floating in a directionless vacuum of
student/staff relations before and was expecting the two day conference to
morph into another never-ending cheerleading session for York. Instead, I was
thrown into a team that not only acknowledged its limitations but shared my
frustrations of operating in a system that prevented institutional
transformation. Once I realised we were on the same page, I started to open up
a little, and in turn learned substantially.

Let’s back track a titch here. Last
summer, I was offered a spot to attend an invite-only conference at York
University entitled the ‘Change Academy’. While I was not given any depth or
context to the event, I willingly obliged thinking that it was, if anything,
another opportunity to network amongst skilled professionals (and enjoy two
days of free catered meals). The project team that asked me to be a part of
this process is designing a ‘Virtual Learning Commons’; a set of online
learning modules freely accessible to all students and staff and geared for
helping students easily access information on foundational learning skills for
success. I was familiar with this group through my work, and, honestly, because
they were paying me to go....I went.

That said, my expectations amounted to
what happens after Stephen Harper promises to keep Millennium Development
Goals. What I found immediately entertaining, though, was my position as the only student in a team of seven project
leaders and the opportunity to disrupt the process to add a little student-based
criticism. While the idea of a Virtual Learning Commons is highly innovative
(or at least innovative enough to be chosen for a summit of ‘York’s most
transformative projects’), it is only as effective
as its ability to be adopted into the university community. My job at the
Change Academy, because I believe in VLC, was to find the best way of doing so
and communicate that to the people in charge.

Perhaps less expected was the outright
transparency my team had when discussing their struggles and
inter-organizational issues. I had, like never before, become witness to the
problems and stresses of university staff who are driving change. Their
tensions fascinated me and substantially added to my doubled-pronged approach
when helping students as both a student leader and staff member. There is
always more than one side of change, and if I am to grow in my position for as
long as I may be here I have to start paying more attention to what happens
behind the surface or Canada’s second largest (and lowest ranking) university.
There’s nowhere to go but up.

Welcome to lost and found!

I'm glad you've found your way over. This blog is maintained and operated by Aaron Turpin and cronicles the activities of a Student-Employee/Traveller/Creative Thinker. Check out what I've been up to lately by cruising the various tabs above and reading the posts. Leave a comment if you wish!

About Me

I am a curious person by nature and have an immense passion for learning and new experiences. Travelling and stepping out of my comfort bubble are huge parts of my life. I try to live creatively with everything I do while supporting the global community as both a leader and a student.